Author’s Diary for April 8, 2020: Bids Appendix (Helping Allies Recover)

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We wrapped up the Crafting bid yesterday. Now learn how you can help your allies recover from their mistakes in Covenant. More below the fold.

One of Covenant’s central themes is that the PCs must work together in order to survive and defeat their opponents. It therefore stands to reason that helping your allies should have its own trait and bids.

Enter the Assist trait and bid. Like the Computers trait and bid, it’s something that I should have added earlier, but didn’t. Until now.

First, the Assist trait.

• Assist: Providing assistance and support to allies
  • Suggested Uses:
    • Advising others on how to provide assistance
    • Combining your efforts with others to provide assistance
    • Knowing how to be assist
    • Helping an ally recover from a failed bid
    • Improving an ally’s performance
    • Teaching an ally a trait or ability
    • Giving an ally access to a trait or ability for a single scene
  • Negative Uses: None

Now that we have an Assist trait, we can start making Assist bids. Its first use, Recover, helps your allies recover from failed bids. You could, for example:

• Yank someone away from an exploding grenade so that it won’t hurt xir as badly
• Help someone up after xi’s knocked prone
• Grab someone to keep xir from falling while climbing

To be honest, I’m not too happy with this use of the Assist bid, and may be dropping it in favor of an ability or two later. Time and playtests will tell.

Recover: Help an ally recover from a failed bid

• To Accomplish:
  • Fixed Assist bid, set by the FM
  • Must be made immediately after an ally fails a bid
  • Can usually assist only allies in the same area as the character
  • Can only assist allies in other areas as circumstances permit
• Successful Bid:
  • The character adds 1 advantage to the ally’s Resistance bid or other bid to resist the effects of a failed bid.
  • The character prevents the ally from falling after being knocked prone or knocked back.
  • The ally immediately stands up after being knocked prone without making an Agility bid. 
• Unsuccessful Bid: 
  • The character does not assist xir ally.
  • The character adds 1 disadvantage to the ally’s Resistance bid or other bid to resist the effects of a failed bid.
• Suggested Traits: Assist, Defense, Perception
• Suggested Advantages: 
  • The character has tapped and/or untapped traits that are relevant to the assistance that xi is giving.
• Suggested Disadvantages: 
  • The character does not have traits that are relevant to the assistance that xi is giving.
  • The character is trying to assist more than one ally.
  • The character is under attack.
  • The ally is under attack.

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That’s it for now. Talk to you tomorrow.